That elimination of the inventory system works great for cars produced locally. What of those produced overseas, or even on the opposite side of the US? Consumers can handle waiting a week for a car they ordered, but you can't just throw a car into the UPS cargo hold and deliver it to the buyer's doorstep a day or two later.

Just as an example, if you're Toyota, and you know how well your top five models sell in the US, you'd either build two factories strategically located near the west and east coasts, or you'd build one giant plant in eg Texas and ship the cars west or east, splitting the time it would take to ship it across the entire country side to side.

Most of Toyota's profit comes from just a few best selling models (that tend to be their best selling models year after year). That's where you'd start on this type of automation, and you'd invent new manufacturing technology accordingly as necessary.

The criticism I see most often on the concept, is that it'd be challenging because our manufacturing processes are pathetically ancient. I agree: it's time to move manufacturing into the future. It's not a question of if it can be done, it's: who is going to do it first.

You gotta love the eagerness the HN world has to label these old companies as idiots.. Never mind that 'kanban' came from the auto-industry. I say that tongue in cheek, there probably are some changes that could make the industry a lot better, we need dreamers to try.

The actual integration part isn't the problem, I don't believe. The dealers themselves could probably do that with a little help and some changes if you could deliver them a crate of all the parts. When you buy a Honda accord, there are at least 3 different power train options, a 4-cylinder manual (do they still make this?,) a 4-cylinder CVT, and a 6-cylinder automatic; and Honda has been amazing at actually reducing the number of options over the years. Do you build the power train on demand or do you attempt to forecast sales and stock an inventory? That's a very significant part of the overall cost. Many of those parts are forged and then machined both, just building the head takes some time and precision, let alone assembling it... there are interior changes that have to integrated as well, from the dash display to things like paddles for shifting in some formats.

With a lot of modern cars, I wouldn't be surprised if the rolling chassis for the different models is very nearly the same but subtly different depending upon the power train. Toyota has the highlander, it's a very popular platform, it also comes in a hybrid configuration, I suspect that are more than just some subtle changes to a lot more parts for that. Same with like an all-wheel drive as an option type products... or convertible roof. I think the navi-option on some mass market cars results in a different dashboard molding.

If you limit "options" to color and seat materials, this is an easy problem. The auto industry practically invented options though, like Ford and Lincoln and Mercury were the same vehicles for a long time, the fake options helped sell way more product. Today when you buy a Camry, it's almost like there are four or five entirely different products that are all labeled "Camry" from like an entry level spartan 4-cylinder edition up to the hybrid limited that costs nearly twice as much. The market seems to like that. That's the trick, if you could some how convince the buyer that they had real options but they didn't... Maybe electric motors are a big part of that, take performance off the table as an option and things can be made more simple.

This works great if you don't mind cutting down the number of car models a whole lot. Factories are reconfigured multiple times a year to make different models and there's weeks of downtime between manufacturing runs. It might be months before there's a factory that is ready to make a lower-volume model.

In Sweden where I live popular configurations fitting specific price brackets are kept in stock.

Custom configurations on the other hand can take weeks or months to get from the factory to Sweden. Those who know what they want pre-order a car so that it's delivered when they want to replace their current car, which is usually every 3 years.

I bet Dell still keeps an inventory, it's just a vastly reduced one.

>I bet Dell still keeps an inventory, it's just a vastly reduced one.

That's pretty common. I can walk into an Apple store and walk out with one of a variety of models. However, many memory and disk configs will have to be special-ordered and I'll have to wait a couple of weeks.

I expect if car selling moved to more of a BTO system, you'd see dealers/factory stores stocking some level of popular model/trim package/color combinations but everything else would be weeks to months to get.

Also building a computer in terms of clipping in various cards etc is a lot quicker than building a car.

>>> The automaker never builds a car that hasn't already been sold.

I am not familiar with the industry, how long does it take to make a car and deliver it to the customer (let's assume to a major US city)?

It takes Toyota 16 to 18 hours or so from start to finish on a car, with around 35 total man hours of labor put into each.

I think a custom vehicle ordered from a sales outlet, could be completed within 2 to 3 days, and shipped out, available to the customer within 7 to 10 days.

It would require pushing manufacturing forward in numerous ways, and retooling the entire process of making a car for this business model, but there's no reason that can't be done. It would already exist if the laws allowed for direct sales.

Except that the factories are already booked out several months in advance. Manufacture of a car takes less than a day, delivery can be done within a week, but that doesn't help if the nearest available slot in the factory is 4 months away.

A problem that would be immediately solved if it meant losing direct to consumer sales...

In Germany when you order a car at a car dealer you usually have to wait several weeks or months until you get your car. Obviously depending on the backlog in the factory.